Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/280

270 John lowered his bayonet, and the two angry women walked past him, darting withering glances at his discomfited face.

"It 's no use, Netty," said Sarah after this. "It 's no use. I do believe that ninety-nine women out of a hundred are absolutely destitute of logic. If you were to talk to Clara till the millennium, you could never make her see that her being in charge of the diet kitchen gives her no right to break Doctor Hale's rules."

As week after week went by, and Sarah and Netty set in the two hard wooden chairs in the linen room, mending, mending, mending, eight hours a day. there began, as I said, to cross their minds a dim distrust of the common sense of their proceedings.

"How much do you suppose I have saved the United States Government by mending that stocking?" said Netty, one day, holding up on her little round fist a stocking whose foot was one solid mass of darns.

Sarah laughed. "Oh, Netty," she said, "what did you mend that for? It was n't worth it."

"I know that as well as you do," retorted Netty. "But we have barely enough to go round, and to morrow's Saturday. I did hope that box from Provincetown would have had some stockings in it, but there was only one pair. Look at them!" and Netty held up a pair of socks knit of fine scarlet worsted on very fine needles. They were really